Eddie moved quickly, sprinting up a set of ironwork stairs. Eight men were with him now. The hostile boarding was complete. No one would hold this ship against them. He grinned at the thought of it.
His crew was efficient, man. Killers.
They came to the pilot house, which was all windows. There were three men inside. Eddie could look inside and see them clearly. They didn’t even try to keep Eddie and his boys out. What good would it do?
Eddie simply opened the door and walked in.
The men were small and middle-aged, each one wearing a tan uniform. They looked like government officials of some kind. It was a joke. They were smugglers, sailing an old, decrepit freighter, wearing stolen or fake uniforms. Most of the equipment in this pilot house seemed broken, useless. Eddie smiled at them.
“Who is the captain?”
The three men stared, uncertain.
“Tell me, or I will kill all three.”
The man in the middle, the smallest and oldest of the three, nodded. He was perfectly bald. His hands were large and his skin was dark black. His face was deeply lined. “I am the captain.”
Eddie nodded. He glanced at his own men.
Two gunshots rang out, and the men flanking the captain instantly sank to the floor, both dead before they reached it.
The smell of gunpowder rose in the room.
“Where are the diamonds?” Eddie said now.
The captain was calm. He hardly seemed surprised at the death all around him. By the looks of him, he had been alive, and at sea, a long time. He was probably accustomed to this sort of thing. He lowered his hands and shook his head.
“There are no diamonds.”
“No diamonds?” Eddie said, his grin broader than ever. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. There is nothing that you might want.”
“Why did you fight then? What were you trying to protect?”
The captain shrugged. “Ourselves. Because you are dirty Nigerian pirates. We knew you would slaughter us if you captured the ship.”
“What is on board here?” Eddie said. “Surely there is something.”
“I will say it again,” the captain said. “There is nothing here that you want. And you will be happier if you leave it where you found it. I assure you of this.”
Eddie laughed. “Something important, then. Show me.”
They went below decks. The captain walked Eddie and his men through hold after empty hold, moving ever downward into the bowels of the ship. There were no signs of life, not even rats. There were also no signs of cargo – just dark, rusty, empty holds swept clean.
Finally, they entered a large room. A tall bulk loomed in the darkness. Eddie’s men didn’t need to be told what to do. They put the flashlights on it.
As they approached, the thing became clearer. It was a large steel box, gunmetal gray. The edges were welded together. It wasn’t clear how to open it, other than perhaps cutting it with a blowtorch. There were Cyrillic markings on the outside – CCCP. That was interesting. The initials of the old Soviet Union. That meant this thing had been kicking around for more than twenty years. It towered above their heads.
“What is it?” Eddie said softly, his voice echoing through the cavernous hold. “A weapon of some kind?”
“I don’t know,” the captain said.
Eddie looked at him sharply. “You don’t know what it is?”
The man shook his head. “It is not my job to know. It’s none of my business.”
This thing had gotten everyone on his ship killed, and pretty soon, it would get him killed, too. But somehow it was none of his business.
“Who is your client?”
The man stared balefully, perhaps imagining the torture he would endure until he offered satisfactory answers.
“If I tell you, they will kill me.”
Eddie shrugged. “Yes, but if you don’t tell me…”
“You will also kill me.”
“I killed all your men,” Eddie said. “You are only alive because I say so. Your only hope is to tell me. Perhaps you can avoid your client. Maybe for a short while, maybe forever. But avoid me? It’s too late for that.”
“Your life will be forfeit if I tell you,” the man said.
Eddie smiled. How many times had his life been forfeit?
“Tell me anyway.”
CHAPTER FIVE
6:51 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
Headquarters of the Special Response Team
McLean, Virginia
Not even 7 o’clock, and there were half a dozen private cars in the parking lot, to go with the four black agency SUVs. The lot had already been plowed once, and a groundskeeper was out snow-blowing the walkways.
That’s what Luke liked to see – people ahead of the game. Technically, the place didn’t open until nine.
He held his identification to the scanner, and the big glass front doors unlocked. He stepped out of the blowing snow and into the main atrium. It was open and airy, with tall bamboo trees reaching toward the three-story ceiling. Everything was new and beautiful and high-tech. A stone waterfall greeted people as they entered, etched into the stone a message from Abraham Lincoln: Those who are ready to sacrifice freedom for security ultimately will lose both.
To Stone, it seemed that Lincoln was speaking to him personally. An agency like the Special Response Team was designed for rapid action, at times unfettered by the bureaucracy, the guidelines and the laws that slowed others down. The goal was security, of course, protection of the innocent, but there had to be a balance – they were not a law unto themselves. It was important to remember that.
He glanced around the lobby before heading to his office. It was hard to believe. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Wasn’t that what people said sometimes? Stone didn’t go in for that sort of thing, generally speaking, but in this case it was true.
The new SRT headquarters were the old headquarters from years before, but gutted, stripped to the studs, and totally transformed. From the outside, the squat, three-story glass and concrete building looked utterly drab and functional, like a state university building from the 1970s, or an old Khrushchev-era Russian apartment complex.
But the brand new black Bell 430 helicopter hunched on the pad, with a bright white SRT logo on its side, might give a hint what you’d find inside the building. There were offices on the first and second floors, and a state-of-the-art conference room and command center that was nearly a match for the Situation Room at the White House.
It had every technological innovation from Mark Swann’s fever dreams – including its own server farm, an encrypted network from which Swann could easily access spy satellites and data surveillance programs like ECHELON, and a small dedicated room for piloting drones. The workout center (complete with cardio equipment, weight machines, and a heavily padded sparring room) and the cafeteria were on the third floor. The soundproof gun range was in the basement.
The agency had twenty employees, the perfect size to respond to unfolding events fast, light, and with total flexibility. The new SRT was in its infancy, and they were still building teams and working to entice superstars away from private organizations, other government agencies, and the military.
Spun off from the FBI and now organized as a sub-agency of the Secret Service, the arrangement limited Luke’s interactions with the federal bureaucracy. He reported directly to the President of the United States, which at